


Desolation

by Nyerus (dragonmist310)



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Space, Angst with a Happy Ending, Artificial Intelligence, M/M, Suspense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-11
Updated: 2017-10-11
Packaged: 2019-01-16 02:51:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12333978
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dragonmist310/pseuds/Nyerus
Summary: Space is a terrifying place to be stranded with an intangible enemy.





	Desolation

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the SVDD Spoopy Fic Collection!!!
> 
> Victuuri in space is my favorite thing ever, and I'll take any opportunity to put 'em there.
> 
> This is heavily inspired by Mass Effect: Andromeda as well as a bunch of sci-fi/space movies. One in particular, but I don't want to spoil anything. ;)

**** Yuuri did not remember going to sleep.

He remembered the events surrounding it. He remembered everything that lead up to it, everything that caused him to sign up for all of this. He remembered thinking about how scratchy his suit was—how the collar dug into his skin if he moved or turned his head. He remembered the sudden wave of panic that seized him as the lid of his cryopod closed shut, the oxygen being replaced by a combination of gasses meant to induce unconsciousness, and then the near-instant sedation that followed it. He remembered the friendly-faced scientist outside his pod telling him  _ “You’ll be in for a treat by the time you wake up!” _ as the final words anyone said as he left behind his old life.

But Yuuri would always remember waking up.

He would remember the instant of his first waking breath—the sudden rush of air into his lungs which hadn’t been used properly in god knows how long. He would remember the desperate wheezing and gasping as his lungs tried to adjust, and the sensation of his stomach rolling in nausea at the suddenness of it all. He would remember the tears prickling his burning eyes as he opened them, reaching out blindly with shaking hands to grasp at the edges of his open cryopod. He would remember seeing nothing, hearing nothing until he heard an unknown voice telling him _ “Thank god, you’re alive!” _ as the first words anyone said as he begun his new life.

He wouldn’t realize it until later, the significance of those words, but it was hard to focus at the time when all his body wanted to do was turn itself inside out, it seemed.

“Help!” Yuuri rasped out, his voice rough from disuse and sounding nothing like him. His heart was racing and his head was pounding as though he’d just run a marathon. He sent himself into a coughing fit from the effort of trying to lift himself out of the pod, but a hand on his shoulder gently pushed him back down.

“You’re okay—you’re alright,” the voice told him. Yuuri couldn’t quite see properly yet. His vision was blurry and his eyes were having a hard time adjusting to any amount of light after being used to complete darkness for so long. “Just lay back down and take deep breaths, that’s all. Don’t try to sit up yet or move too much.”

Yuuri was inclined to listen and did as he was instructed, laying down and closing his eyes. He felt his pod give a small jerk as the sides slid away, leaving his hands grabbing the edge of what was now a makeshift bed. He took deep breaths and let them out slowly, feeling his heart rate return to normal and the dizziness subside slowly. “You’re okay,” the voice repeated over and over, almost like a mantra, and after a few moments Yuuri knew his hearing had returned to normal. Feeling brave enough, he blinked his eyes open slowly, squinting at the low lighting until he gradually adjusted.

There was a man standing over him—silver hair and the bluest eyes Yuuri had ever seen. Was this one of the doctors assigned to the task of waking everyone up? As Yuuri’s vision cleared, however, he realized that this man did not look like a calm scientist ready to help him and others out of stasis, but instead looked like he was on the verge of tears. Yet there was a smile on his face—an inexplicably sad one.

“You’re alive!” the man whispered to him, his voice full of amazement and looking at Yuuri in a way no one had ever looked at him before. Then the man suddenly backed away from the pod, sniffling loudly and wiping his eyes with the back of his hand. He shook his head and sighed before coming closer again, still wearing that same sad smile. 

Why was this man crying?

Yuuri tried to sit up, then, but found it more challenging than he anticipated. But the man helped—strong arms bracing Yuuri and assisting him into an upright position at last. “There you go, nice and slow. Don’t worry, the disorientation will pass quickly enough. Just hang in there.” The man seemed young, Yuuri noted. He was tall and handsome, though he looked strangely exhausted. Not the kind of exhaustion from lack of sleep, however.

“Wha—” Yuuri attempted before his voice gave out. He coughed a little more and cleared his throat before trying again, this time with more success. “What happened? Did we make it?” His throat was still too dry and each word felt like sandpaper against his larynx.

“Yes,” the man said simply, a frown replacing his smile. Yuuri didn’t know what to make of it. “I’ll explain it all later, but right now let’s check your vitals.” The man grabbed a small bottle from a table beside them and gave it to him. “We’ll get some food in you too, Yuuri, but drink this first. It’s just water.”

“You know who I am?” Yuuri asked after taking a long sip from the bottle. Suddenly aware of his thirst, he downed the whole bottle while the man took his free hand to check his vitals.

“Of course,” the man said fondly, then held up a finger in front of Yuuri’s face, moving it from side to side. “Look here for me—good.” It was a simple, routine check-up and a small battery of tests later, the man smiled at him again, clearly relieved. “Perfectly healthy. It’s a miracle.”

Yuuri was about to ask what he meant, but to his surprise he is suddenly swept up into a hug. “Um—”

“God, you’re alive, you’re  _ alive _ . Someone’s  _ alive _ .” The man was shaking slightly, his arms wrapped so tightly around Yuuri that it became difficult to breathe.

“What’s going on?” Yuuri asked, squirming out of the hold as his mind registered what had just been said to him. Of course he was alive—why wouldn’t he be? He was just in cryostasis for what was supposed to be a little over a century along with thousands of others. The man staggered back, shocked, when Yuuri pushed him away. “What do you mean?”

Yuuri swung his feet off the edge of the bed and stood, his legs wobbling at the effort. The man came forward to help him but Yuuri raised his hand in protest. After a few seconds of flexing his leg muscles, he took a couple tentative steps forward, each steadier than the last. Out of the pod and without the hood of the structure obstructing his view, he could see his surroundings clearly.

They were not in the cryostasis chamber.

“What’s going on?” Yuuri repeated more firmly, despite the waiver in his voice. Despite the sudden awareness that something wasn’t right, he swallowed down his fear. This room seemed like a makeshift medbay, with a few gurneys to one side of the room, a tangle of various equipment scattered around somewhat haphazardly, and of course Yuuri’s cryopod. It was the only one in there, and the doors at the far end of the room were clearly sealed shut. “Who are you?”

“Relax, I’ll explain, okay?” the man told him, holding up his hands to show he meant no harm. “My name is Victor and I was a doctor assigned to the cryostasis section.”

“And?”

“And things went very, very wrong.” The man—Victor—sighed and pushed back his messy bangs. “I don’t know how to tell you any of this. I don’t even know where to start. You’d think I would, after waiting so long for you.”

“Okay, wait—wait. Just start at the beginning. What happened? Where are we? Did we make it to the forward station?” Yuuri asked, unable to stop himself from asking questions once he began.

“No,” came the answer. Yuuri felt his knees suddenly give out and he fell to the floor, feeling just as cold as the metal beneath him. His vision swam and he knew it wasn’t his just his disorientation.

“What?” None of this made sense. He knew how it was _ supposed _ to go. It was supposed to be simple. He was supposed to wake up after roughly a century of cryostasis, right at the edge of their destination: the forward station. And that was supposed to be their checkpoint before they headed to their new home: Terra Prime.

But nothing in Yuuri’s life had ever gone to plan, so maybe he shouldn’t be so surprised.

“Hey,” Victor said softly, coming over and holding out a hand to help Yuuri up. “It  _ is _ probably better if you’re sitting down for this, but not on the floor, okay?”

“I don’t understand,” Yuuri said, his voice wavering and his vision still swimming as he reached up blindly. Victor helped him to his feet, steadying him by the forearms before leading him to the nearest chair.

“I’ll explain, I promise,” Victor said, pulling up another chair and sitting in front of him. He sighed again, giving Yuuri an almost pitying look. “It’s going to be hard to believe, and I’m sorry. All I can do is tell you the truth. And it isn’t something you’re going to want to hear.”

“Tell me,” Yuuri pleaded. “I need to know what’s going on.”

“Well, first things first. Stardate 2284, about one astronomical unit from the forward station,” Victor said. “We—”

“2284?” Yuuri interrupted. That was another shock. “I was supposed to be out of stasis in 2282! I was slated for defrost with the third engineering block.” He’d been part of the engineering team and was supposed to be woken during the third set to help with maintenance on the ship’s systems among other things. Why would he be woken later?

“I know, but there was a problem.  _ Everything _ went wrong, here, Yuuri. None of the blocks were woken up in order and—well, let me just explain.”

“Alright.”

“I wasn’t supposed to be woken up when I was, either. I was part of the third medical block but I was woken up during the fifth set of defrosts.” That was close to the middle, Yuuri recalled. There were a total of twelve blocks of each type—engineering, medical, science, and general population.

“That doesn’t make sense. The whole process was automated. The ship’s AI had clear protocol to follow.”

Victor let out a dark laugh, a strange expression on his face that Yuuri could only describe as desperate.

“But that’s just it. Nothing went according to protocol. The  _ AI _ didn’t follow protocol. It did at first, though. The first two sets were woken without a problem, all according to schedule. Everything went just fine, or so I heard. The problems started with the third set. We were supposed to be woken up then, and we almost were. We were half out of stasis when something went wrong with the system. A lot of people….” Victor turned his gaze towards the floor.

“‘A lot of people’ what?” Yuuri pressed when Victor didn’t continue.

“A lot of people in the third set  _ died _ as a result.”

“What?!” Yuuri gasped. Died? How was that possible?

“Waking someone from stasis is a complicated procedure. Done right, there’s no permanent problems. Done wrong, it’s fatal. And there’s a shockingly thin line between the two that most people would be better off not knowing about. I can’t explain it without getting too into details—mainly has to do with neurology—but the end result of what happened is relatively simple. A lot of people in the third set died. They put everyone who was still alive back under to save us.”

“So the AI glitched? Did the engineers fix it?” That was their job, after all. To make sure the ship and all its systems—AI included—ran smoothly.

“They tried. They tried but it still didn’t work. People were brought out of statis haphazardly—like I was, randomly, with the fifth set. But I consider it shocking that I have made it out of stasis at all. A majority didn’t. They’re just… there. Dead, in their pods. None of us knew what to do or how to handle it, so we decided to leave them in the stasis chamber. There were just too many for the few of us to handle. There’s no protocol for this.”

“I can’t—” Yuuri choked out, aware that he was trembling. None of this made sense. What Victor was saying had to be some sort of post-stasis nightmare. It  _ had _ to be. “I don’t understand. How many—?”

“Out of 3000 in stasis, only about 400 made it alive. Honestly, Yuuri, I’m not sure who’s lucky, but it sure as fuck isn’t us.”

“Then where is everyone else?” Yuuri asked him. Suddenly, that was the only question that seemed relevant even though there were about a million more running through his head. He felt bile rise in his throat from his empty stomach, his entire body running cold as though someone dumped ice water on him when Victor looked sadly at him.

“There is no one else.”

“What?”

“It’s just us left.”

“You’re lying!”

“Yuuri—”

“That’s not possible! What happened to the rest?! The other 400? Is this some sick joke? A test?” Yuuri rose from his chair, almost tripping over it as he tried to put distance between him and Victor.

“Please, sit back down and let me finish explaining.” Victor’s calm tone only served to set Yuuri more on edge.

“No, stay the fuck away from me!” Yuuri shouted when Victor rose to his feet and took a step towards him. “

Yuuri swiveled around, aware that there was only one exit from this room but that there was nothing between it and him. Before Victor could say anything more, Yuuri made a beeline towards it on shaky legs.

“Wait, Yuuri!”

But Yuuri didn’t wait—he didn’t slow down at all, even when his leg cramped up. Victor was chasing behind him now, but Yuuri grabbed the chair near the corner and flung it back, towards Victor, to slow him down.

“Hey!” Victor cried out, but Yuuri had no idea whether or not he’d hit his mark. He was too busy propelling himself forward towards the doors. He slammed the safety lock in the center of the door and it parted with a hiss, leading into a large atrium that was strangely stockpiled with provisions. But Yuuri had no time to think about them either, knowing that he had to get across the large room to the other side.

Yuuri dragged himself through the atrium, continuing his tactics of throwing whatever he could get his hands on behind him to slow Victor down. “Stay the fuck away from me!” he warned again as he hurled a nearby block of freeze-dried food at the man, catching him square in the shoulder. Satisfied as Victor stopped to nurse his shoulder, Yuuri continued up the stairs towards the large set of doors just a few feet away from him.

“Stop throwing things, damn it!” Victor shouted as he nursed his injured shoulder. “You’re in shock—wait, no! You can’t go through those doors!”

Yuuri ignored the urgency and fear in Victor’s voice and surged forward after reaching the last step, reaching out to slam the lock in the center, but was tackled to the ground before he could.

“Let me go!” Yuuri said as he thrashed against Victor’s hold, but being freshly out of cryostasis meant that his muscles were still weak.

“Look!” Victor said unexpectedly, swinging around Yuuri to face the clear portion of the doors where he could see into the room beyond.

Yuuri stopped struggling at the sight immediately, going slack as Victor slowly released him.

“Oh my god….” Yuuri breathed out as he watched objects—chairs, plants, and heavy machinery alike—in the other room float through the air, suspended in zero gravity. Suddenly, as if on cue, some weirdly-shaped black mass hit the door before floating away in the opposite direction. Yuuri came to realize that it was a body bag and flung himself away from the door in horror. “Fuck!”

“The AI turned off the artificial gravity in the rest of the ship. The atrium and the medbay are the only rooms on the ship that still have gravity and oxygen,” Victor explained. “They’re the only rooms that are safe.”

“This is insane—the AI went rogue?” Yuuri was having a hard time processing it. It was humanity’s worst fear realized, in the dead of space where they were most helpless.

“Yes. We don’t know why or how, much less its purpose for doing all of this. Fixing it is…. Well, I guess there is no fixing it. The only solution would be to kill it, and that’s beyond my area of expertise or ability,” Victor said, standing up and brushing off his pants. Again, he helped Yuuri to his feet. “Do you understand a little now?”

“It killed everyone else?” Just asking made Yuuri sick to his stomach. He hadn’t eaten in almost a century but he was glad that there was nothing to throw up otherwise he would have by now.

“One way or another. I’m only alive because a colleague of mine sacrificed himself. I’ve just been trying to stay alive for the last few weeks. Or months—I’m not sure how long it’s been since then.”

“You’ve been alone on this godforsaken ship for that long? With that rogue AI out to kill you?”

“Yes,” Victor said simply. “Honestly it’s a miracle it hasn’t overridden the safeties we put on these two rooms yet. I bet it’s trying through, now more than ever with you awake.”

Yuuri realized what Victor meant by that. From the way Victor looked at him it was clear. Yuuri knew the AI’s code, at least in theory. He hadn’t been part of the team that built it, but he had working knowledge of the thing and how it functioned, even roughly. It meant that Yuuri could kill it and save them.

If only he knew how.

Victor persuaded Yuuri to eat once he got over his shock somewhat, realizing that there was no choice but to accept what was happening. He had to work his way up from nutrient paste into semi-solids, and then finally to solid food over the course of about a week.

There was little to do, unsurprisingly. There were a few workout machines in the atrium they could use (and helped Yuuri regain his strength), as well as datapads and screens with various videos on them ranging from old movies to documentaries from home. Other than that, each other’s company was the best way to pass time, Yuuri found. Despite their bleak situation, Victor was usually shockingly upbeat—always kind and comforting; unwavering whenever Yuuri needed his strength the most. Over time, Yuuri realized that all of Victor’s smiles were for his sake.

Victor had been alone for so long with nothing but those videos to keep him company. And there wasn’t even any hope of him being rescued because as soon as the crew realized what was happening, they quarantined the entire ship and sent word to the forward station to prevent a rescue team from trying to save them and ending up killed as well. Honestly, Yuuri didn’t know how Victor had decided to stay alive after being alone like that. If he were in that position, Yuuri was sure he would have taken his own life rather than live that way. But Victor had told him that it was, funnily enough, Yuuri who had given Victor a reason to live in the end. He’d kept careful watch over Yuuri (and now fondly called him “sleeping beauty” as a result) after he and his late colleague had managed to save him—and only him, unfortunately—from being killed in stasis by the AI like all the others. It made sense why Victor had been so emotional when Yuuri had first awoken. He was the first human Victor had contact with after weeks of solitude in a hostile environment.

“I won’t let us die here,” Yuuri said one day after they finished watching a documentary about something or another. They were laying in the makeshift bedding they’d long since assembled for themselves underneath the screen, shoulder-to-shoulder and firmly in each other’s spaces. Over time they’d grown closer than Yuuri could have predicted; boundaries becoming meaningless. Maybe it was just natural to form a deep bond with someone you were stuck in an impossible situation with. They had no one else but each other now, alone amongst the stars.

Victor turned to him, his blue eyes almost electric from the light from the screen. Even with the strange shadows on his face from the lighting, he was still so beautiful, Yuuri thought. How beautiful would he be if he were safe and healthy, not plagued by exhaustion and ever-present fear?

“I know,” Victor said in return as Yuuri rolled over to face him, placing a hand on his cheek. Victor placed his hand over Yuuri’s and gave him a small, encouraging, smile. Yuuri wanted to see him smile genuinely, carefree and happy, and for that he would do anything. Victor leaned in and gave Yuuri a small peck on the lips before whispering, “Neither will I. We’ll get out of here, together.”

Yuuri believed him and knew if it were anyone else here with him right now, he wouldn’t.

Over time Yuuri had been learning as much as he could about the AI’s code. The more you knew about your enemy, the easier it would be to defeat them. And eventually, after what felt like several weeks, he found what he was looking for: a way to temporarily  _ pause _ the AI’s functionality, allowing them to make a break for it.

“Here’s the plan,” Yuuri started as Victor set down a tray of heated food before him at the table they were sitting at. Victor took a seat opposite him with his own tray. “First, I’ll disable the AI. This will only last a handful a minutes because that thing is going to find a way around my blocks for sure. I’ve built them to be as complex as possible with plenty of junk code, but that thing can process on a scale of terabytes per second so it won’t last long. But as soon as I inject it in, I’ll reactivate the artificial gravity and oxygen around the rest of the station. After this, we make a run for it to the emergency escape pods. They’re built to hold three people for a few days, so it’s no problem. We’ll manually override it, sever it entirely from the AI before blasting off this godforsaken ship once and for all. I can pilot it to the forward station. But it’s going to be risky.”

“It’s better than staying here until we run out of provisions or the AI finds a way around our manual locks,” Victor sighed. “We’ll do it.”

Yuuri nodded and they ate in silence, though Victor held Yuuri’s hand tightly in his on the table the whole time. This could be the day they died.

Yuuri’s fingers hovered over the terminal, trembling as he hesitated.

“ _ Zvezda moya _ ,” Victor prompted from beside him. “It’s now or never.”

Yuuri nodded and took a breath before pressing down at the screen. A loud screeching—a sign of anger—instantly echoed throughout the atrium, causing him to nearly jump out of his skin. But he didn’t have time to slow down, he had to work fast. Tapping away rapidly at the terminal he entered in the necessary commands to restore gravity, meeting no resistance from the now-disabled AI.

“Get ready!” Yuuri shouted over the artificial screeching. A few keystrokes later, he slammed down on the enter key and heard the telltale thrum of the oxygen and artificial gravity being restored in the adjacent room. “Now!”

Without wasting a moment, the two of them made for the door. Victor reached it first, slamming the safety lock and slipping through before they even fully opened, grabbing Yuuri’s hand and pulling him through as well. Yuuri knew the layout of the ship from memorizing the blueprints, but figured it was better to let Victor lead them to the escape pods because Victor had actually traversed the ship before.

“Come on, come on, it’s not much further,” Victor said, practically dragging Yuuri along when Yuuri almost tripped over debris. His heart was racing in a way it never had before, fully aware that at any second the AI could overcome his trick and turn off the gravity again, rendering them vulnerable. After that, all it would need to do was suck the oxygen out of whatever room they were in again to suffocate them. 

Easy. Humans were so easy to kill.

It was difficult to navigate through a ruined ship, Yuuri realized quickly. They had to avoid everything from lopsided equipment, broken panels, and open electricals to  _ dead bodies _ . It would not be something Yuuri would ever get out of his nightmares, given he lived beyond this.

They weaved around broken machinery and over toppled tables until they had the emergency pods in sight. They were within arm’s reach when the AI apparently regained control and shut off the gravity again. Yuuri’s shoes scuffed the floor as they slowly lifted off, and he flailed helplessly for a second before Victor grabbed him again. “We’ll make it! Hurry, before it gets the oxygen!”

Victor held onto an exposed beam above them and managed to essentially throw Yuuri towards the nearest pod. Yuuri crashed into its hatch, but got a good grasp on it. He wrenched it open and threw himself inside before turning around and holding his hand out for Victor. “Jump!”

Victor pushed off from the beam with all his might, floating across and almost making it to the pod until the AI decided to turn the gravity back on. With a cry, he crashed to the floor, almost hitting his head against the edge of a table. The air, too, was quickly thinning.

“Victor! Get up, hurry!” Yuuri urged, clambering out of the pod to help a now-disoriented Victor to his feet and roughly dragging him into the pod and shutting the doors. “Buckle up,” Yuuri warned him as he went to the controls, strapping himself in, as Victor did the same in the adjacent seat.

“Didn’t expect that,” Victor groaned, wiping at a trail of blood on the side of his forehead. He’d been lucky to miss the table, but had still been hurt. However, Yuuri didn’t have the time to ask if he was okay at the moment. He moved his hands as fast as he could across the terminal in the pod, switching everything to manual one by one, aware that he only had a few seconds before the AI re-established full control and halted the pod from being jettisoned out.

“I’ve got it!” Yuuri cried, flipping the last auto into manual mode and slamming the button for release the second he could. With a powerful jolt, the escape pod detached itself and the thrusters activated. Yuuri held nothing back, immediately putting the thrusters on full and propelling them forward so fast that they were both thrown back in their seats. Whatever got them away from that ship the fastest.

For a long moment, neither of them talked. Victor let out a shaky breath, then, and laughed in disbelief. “Are we safe?”

“Yeah,” Yuuri said. “Yeah, we’re safe—somehow.” Yuuri looked at Victor and for a few second they shared a laugh of pure desperation, both grateful to even be alive at the moment.

“There’s no traces of the AI on here? Nothing that can piggyback onto the forward station?” Victor asked after they regained their senses.

“No, I made sure. And if it was on here, we’d be dead already. Could’ve blown up the thrusters or something.”

“When we get to the forward station, I’m going to tell them to blow that fucking ship up. We sabotaged it in the beginning enough that the AI can’t pilot it anywhere, but I would sleep better knowing it was  _ fully dead _ and not just sitting out there in space somewhere.”

“You and me both,” Yuuri said with a relieved sigh, settling into his seat. Hopefully humanity would learn from this disaster, if nothing else. And he knew he’d make sure of it, knew that he wouldn’t let all those deaths be in vain.

They were only about a cycle’s journey away from the forward station, and yet Yuuri couldn’t wait to be there already—accomplished in his personal mission to get Victor to safety at last. “I don’t even know what I’m going to do now. I feel like I’ve been living in some nightmare for so long, and now that we’re finally out of it I have no idea what to do.”

“Don’t think about it too hard. We’ll manage, together,” Victor said simply, entwining his fingers with Yuuri’s on the console in front of them. “Just stay by my side.”

“I will,” Yuuri promised. He set the coordinates to the forward station, letting the pod carry them through the vast emptiness of space towards their future.

**Author's Note:**

> Is an AI so easy to kill? Hmm....
> 
> (Endings are extremely difficult, please forgive me.)
> 
> Please check out the other works in this collection!!! They're all excellent, and some of them are nice n' spicy. ;D


End file.
